12,000 Russian 11th Army Corps, once a threat to NATO, disappeared from the enclave’s defense.

Last Updated on 10/31/2022 by てんしょく飯

Six years ago, the Russian Navy formed a new corps, whose job was to defend Kaliningrad. It is a geographically remote enclave from Russia, located between Poland and Lithuania on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea.

From Kaliningrad, the 11th Corps was pulled up and sent to Ukraine.

In 2022, when the war in Ukraine began to turn very unfavorable for Russia, the Russian government pulled the 11th Corps out of Kaliningrad and sent it into Ukraine. The Ukrainian army immediately destroyed it.

The formation, deployment, and destruction of the XI Corps tells more than a sad tale of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Flanked by two NATO members along a strategically important sea, the corps was supposed to give the Russian military an edge in the global war.

In reality, it fell prey to the shells of the Ukrainian army, which on paper should have been weaker than the Russian army. Today, Kaliningrad is completely undefended, and the state units that at one time posed a threat to NATO have been destroyed.

The 11th Corps was not actually newly formed. It is a reorganization of several existing units under one command corresponding to the Russian Navy’s Baltic Fleet. The corps will oversee motorized divisions, independent motorized regiments, artillery, rocket, air defense companies, and support units.

Until Russia expanded its invasion of Ukraine, which began at the end of February, there were more than 12,000 Russian troops in Kaliningrad, holding 100 T-72 tanks, hundreds of combat vehicle BTRs, Musta S self-propelled howitzers, and rocket launchers BM-27 and BM-30. The 11th Corps supervised most of these forces.

Facing the western border of Lithuania, one of NATO’s weakest countries, the 11th Corps was the anvil from which Russia envisioned invading the former Soviet states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. And the anvil was an 18,000 strong ground force in western Russia bordering the eastern border of the Baltic states.

NATO watched Kaliningrad’s buildup carefully. Kaliningrad is definitely a place where, historically, we have paid close attention to its changing and sensitive regional situation,” an anonymous U.S. Defense Department official told reporters in June.

Those dynamics changed dramatically in February. The Russian government had committed 80% of its ground forces to an expanded invasion of Ukraine, most of which were quickly lost in the desperate fight for the occupation of Khieu.

Poorly led and under resupplied Russian battalions, brigades, and divisions deployed along the roads leading to the capital were helpless before the Ukrainian artillery, drones, and infantry units armed with precision anti-tank missiles.

Tragedy for those who were wounded and died following orders, and a major blow to the Russian war effort.

After only a month of fierce fighting, the Russians withdrew from Kieu. Estimates vary, but 50,000 people may have been killed or wounded before the front line stabilized in May. At the time, Russian forces had a strategic port at Herson in southern Ukraine and were based on the outskirts of Kharkiv, a free city 40 kilometers from the Russian border in northeastern Ukraine.

But the Russian army was vulnerable. And they became even more vulnerable when Ukrainian forces, rearmed with U.S. and European artillery and rockets, began cutting off Russian supply lines. Desperate for new troops, the Russian government rallied the 11th Army Corps and moved it by ship and plane to Belgorod in southern Russia and then to nearby Halkiou in Ukraine.

Three months of hard fighting had sapped the corps’ strength. Reuters obtained some of the 11th Corps’ documents. A spreadsheet dated August 30, just before the massive Ukrainian counterattack, showed that the corps was at 71% of full strength. However, some battalions had been reduced to only 10% of their original strength.

The situation was getting worse for the corps: at the end of August and beginning of September, the Ukrainian army launched two reverse offensives in eastern Halkhiu and northern Herson. The Halkhiu operation consisted of ten long-awaited Ukrainian battalions and exposed serious weaknesses of the Russian forces in the region, including the 11th Corps.

When the Ukrainian army liberated 2,600 square kilometers of the Halkhiu province after two intense weeks, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers fled, surrendered, or died in the region. The 11th Corps suffered more damage than most Russian units in the region. The Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., described the corps as “heavily damaged” in late September.

That may have been an understatement. The Ukrainian general staff concluded that the corps lost 200 vehicles and “half” of its soldiers in the reversal offensive.

It is possible that the 11th Corps will survive. But even if it does, it will undoubtedly take many months to rest, re-equip, recruit and regain a fraction of its former strength.

The deployment and subsequent destruction of the 11th Corps is a tragedy for those who were wounded and died following orders and a major blow to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.

But the impact will spread across Europe. The 11th Corps was originally supposed to defend Kaliningrad and pose a threat to NATO’s eastern front. Now it is unable to carry out either.